Undomestic Goddess*

Me, I’m not a domestic diva. In fact, while I am proud of the fact that I am able to do my own laundry, ironing, and wall-drilling, I am ashamed to say that my house cleaning skills are next to nil. Forget my true-blue Montessori education (where they actually teach you how to sweep the floor and fold clothes properly, among other things) – I have always lived by the philosophy that entropy – the state of disorder – is the most stable state.

For some reason though, ever since I started reading Holly over at Decor8, I’ve been addicted to home blogs. I’ve almost gone through all of Benita’s posts at Chez Larsson, and through the tweet of someone I follow, I’ve stumbled about the youngster’s Young House Love. And, after almost a month of reading these blogs, some latent gene must’ve kicked in and converted me into someone who actually wanted to do something for her home.

Innocently enough, it started with a desire to clean out two desk tops – there’s a desk in my room which had become a catch-all of anything and everything, and a desk in the living room which, surprise surprise, had become a catch-all of, again surprise, anything and everything. It was – to plagiarize the Cobra Starship song - a hot mess. Since I needed to do major overtime at home (something I’ve been doing since my mom left) I figured, I needed a place where I could park my laptops (Ben, the old one, which has MS Office applications, and Bimby, the new one, which is significantly faster).

So, while watching one of my favorite shows over at Discovery Home and Health, I removed all the debris on the desk in my room and started cleaning up. And while I was doing that, I though, why not my side table too? Then I had some stuff that I had to move to the top of my shoe cabinet so I started working on that too. Before I knew it, it was 3 am and I had started on a number of places all over my house. But, my room’s desk was more or less organized (with the drawers lined with lovely paper!!!), my side table was clear, and my head was brimming with ideas.

Having slept at 3 am you’d think I’d crash the following day but for some reason I woke up at around 7 … and raring to go. I tried to stick to my nature and stay in bed a bit longer but my mind just won’t let me sleep. Before long, I had started organizing once more while attacking the laundry and the piles and piles of leaves dumped by Typhoon Basyang.

It’s 10:23 in the evening now, and how I wish I can say that I’m sleeping with a clean house. But, my house is big (and horribly disorganized and un-clean) enough that even the most motivated girl – who has a crazy work-week ahead of her – will be forced to stop sooner or later. In my case, sometime around 4 pm, my feet felt crazy painful that I had no choice but to take a rest by plopping onto my bed. I am proud to say though that the desk which used to be in the living room is back in my mom’s room and is polished and organized with Bimby happily resting on top, the room in my desk is uber clean and organized (drawers included!!!), my side table is not only gleaming but has sufficient space in its drawers to accommodate my reading materials and what-nots, and a whole lot of things have found places where I wouldn’t trip on them should I wake up disoriented in the middle of the night.

What can I say, I was al woman possessed and if no one exorcises me soon, I might just finally create a home that my mom will be proud of .

And, oh, did I tell you that my kitchen towels are freshly laundered?


*with apologies to Sophie Kinsella’s book of the same title. Incidentally, I just discovered that my copy is missing.